Here’s a fun fact: every month roughly 550,000 people become an entrepreneur. You read that right. That’s hundreds of thousands of people a month starting their own business with hopes of being successful. Here’s a not so fun fact: 80% of entrepreneurs fail within the first 18 months. You know that one little building in your hometown that is always changing into a new business? One year it’s a bakery, the next year it’s a boutique and then, somehow it ends up becoming a mattress store. Sure, maybe I’m speaking from personal experience as a confused consumer but the point is, you don’t want to be one of those 8 out of 10.

When you’re starting a brand or business the most important things you need to do is create a conversation about your product or service. Those conversations help develop a good reputation, which brings in new customers and continue to impress loyal customers. There are two main ways to do this: public relations and marketing. It’s very easy to look at these two things as two separate entities but it’s just as easy to intertwine them. The truth is, while marketing and PR are often integrated into the same strategies their missions and goals are different.

There are aspects of a brand that invokes pictures and thoughts in the minds of consumers and customers. But a brand image is more than a logo or catchphrase what consumers know your business by. It is the face of your profession.

Twitter is a social media like Facebook, Myspace, and all the other media platforms that have come and gone in trending over the years. Still, somehow, it has become the preferred form of contact to the public for everyone from Journalists, Actors, and Musicians to yes, you guessed it, Public Relations Experts among others. Perhaps Twitter has recognized this, as is reflected in the recent change in maximum character count in posts.

It’s the beginning of a new year. We’ve watched the ball drop, seen the fireworks and made our resolutions. The trick is actually keeping them. Those of us in the business industry know when we make resolutions for our business in the New Year we plan on making them happen. Success is about making goals and seeing those goals through by ensuring we take the appropriate steps to reach them. This is especially true for new business owners and entrepreneurs. Being the boss is both amazing and overwhelming. With great power comes great responsibility (shout out to Stan Lee) and that responsibility is heavy but it doesn’t have to crush you. That’s what public relations firms are for, we play hardball with you so that you can focus on reaching new heights with your business and we want to help get you there.

Some would say that social media is changing public relations, but what is really happening is that it’s changing the way public relations is done. The goal is still the same, but the route is now different. Connections and communication have always been the main idea of PR, but social media, right from the beginning, has completely changed how we connect and communicate, so naturally, that extends to PR as well.

Social Media - it’s like the final frontier of marketing, reaching far and wide to almost every corner of the world. The benefits for businesses on social media are practically endless. Look, not taking advantage of the social media movement is like not taking advantage of the newly invented Internet and only using newspaper ads. That doesn’t sound like a good business move because it’s not. The same way turning a blind eye to social media isn’t a good idea.

You did it. You took a risk, put the time in and created a business you’re passionate about. The problem you’re facing now is getting your passion to the masses. Maybe you’ve been doing this for a while, and you want your business to last. Perhaps you’re launching your business, and you need it to grow. Whether you’re new at this or not, you want to be successful and stay that way. Chances are if you’re in any kind of business you’ve heard marketing could bring you that success. You see the ads, the billboards, the endless banners in all your free apps -all effective advertising tactics. But the mistake many businesses make is overlooking public relations, which plays an equally as important role in the success and longevity of a business.